Are Mega and Super Yacht Facilities in our Future?

We continue to have strong interest from major yacht manufacturers and yacht restoration companies that want mid-Atlantic locations for either relocation or additional facilities. Some of the companies we are talking with also build and repair large ferry boats, ocean tugs and barges, and other commercial vessels as well as military ships. These facilities need relatively deep water for 100 to 3,000 metric ton vessels and 20 - 40 acres of property with enough adjacent-to-the-water property to transport the vessels to and from the building/restoration buildings. The water depth needed depends on how the yachts are lifted out of the water but 18 feet is the goal. These companies will invest $10-15 million for vessel lift/transfer systems, and invest many more millions in the buildings and facilities (100,000 to 500,000 sq. ft.) to appropriately accommodate for environmental compliance and work quality. The optimum choice of sites by these companies is state owned and leased property, as most competing states with major yacht facilities provide incentives for the jobs and capital investment and this is often in the form of favorable state property leases. Raw land sites are not the first choice as the environmental constraints are likely to take years, but are not out of the question and we may have a couple of these that make sense.

North Carolina has not been in the mini-yacht or mega-yacht industry with the exception of Hatteras Yachts at the very small end of the "yacht scale". NC has an opportunity to get into a multimillion dollar industry in which we currently have no players. We are second only to Washington State in the number of ferry boats we operate, but none of our ferry boats are built in North Carolina. When these big yacht entities are present, there is a new yacht industry of dozens of small companies that cluster around these big yacht companies. The big yacht companies will employ150 - 600 each to start and 200 - 500 jobs will come from the smaller support companies that make up the cluster of support businesses. If you have information on potential sites, call Mike Bradley at 252-728-2144.

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